Ben Kothe / The Atlantic
In 2020, a team of researchers found something surprising in the high clouds of Venus. Earth-based telescopes detected the spectral signature of phosphine, a simple molecule that should have no business persisting in those extremely acidic clouds. Cautiously excited, the researchers wrote that the phosphine could be the result of “unknown photochemistry or geochemistry”or, they noted almost coyly, “possibly life.” It was a thrilling possibility. “Signs of Life Found in the Clouds Surrounding Venus,…….Story continues….
By: Jaime Green
Source: The Atlantic
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Critics:
If extraterrestrial life exists, it could range from simple microorganisms and multicellular organisms similar to animals or plants,to complex alien intelligences akin to humans. When scientists talk about extraterrestrial life, they consider all those types. Although it is possible that extraterrestrial life may have other configurations, scientists use the hierarchy of lifeforms from Earth for simplicity, as it is the only one known to exist.
According to the Big Bang interpretations, the universe as a whole was initially too hot to allow life. 15 million years later, it cooled to temperate levels, but the elements that make up living things did not exist yet. The only freely available elements at that point were hydrogen and helium. Carbon and oxygen (and later, water) would not appear until 50 million years later, created through stellar fusion. At that point, the difficulty for life to appear was not the temperature, but the scarcity of free heavy elements.
Planetary systems emerged, and the first organic compounds may have formed in the protoplanetary disk of dust grains that would eventually create rocky planets like Earth. Although Earth was in a molten state after its birth and may have burned any organics that fell in it, it would have been more receptive once it cooled down. Once the right conditions on Earth were met, life started by a chemical process known as abiogenesis.
Alternatively, life may have formed less frequently, then spread – by meteoroids, for example – between habitable planets in a process called panspermia. There is an area around a star, the circumstellar habitable zone or “Goldilocks zone”, where water may be at the right temperature to exist in liquid form at a planetary surface. This area is neither too close to the star, where water would become steam, nor too far away, where water would be frozen as a rock.
However, although useful as an approximation, planetary habitability is complex and defined by several factors. Being in the habitable zone is not enough for a planet to be habitable, not even to actually have such liquid water. Venus is located in the habitable zone of the Solar System but does not have liquid water because of the conditions of its atmosphere. Jovian planets or Gas Giants are not considered habitable even if they orbit close enough to their stars as hot Jupiters, due to crushing atmospheric pressures.
The actual distances for the habitable zones vary according to the type of star, and even the solar activity of each specific star influences the local habitability. The type of star also defines the time the habitable zone will exist, as its presence and limits will change along with the star’s stellar evolution. Life on Earth is quite ubiquitous across the planet and has adapted over time to almost all the available environments in it, even the most hostile ones.
As a result, it is inferred that life in other celestial bodies may be equally adaptive. However, the origin of life is unrelated to its ease of adaptation, and may have stricter requirements. A planet or moon may not have any life on it, even if it was habitable. It is unclear if life and intelligent life are ubiquitous in the cosmos or rare. The hypothesis of ubiquitous extraterrestrial life relies on the vast size and consistent physical laws of the observable universe.
According to this argument, made by scientists such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking, it would be improbable for life not to exist somewhere else other than Earth.This argument is embodied in the Copernican principle, which states that Earth does not occupy a unique position in the Universe, and the mediocrity principle, which states that there is nothing special about life on Earth.
Other authors consider instead that life in the cosmos, or at least multicellular life, may be actually rare. The Rare Earth hypothesis maintains that life on Earth is possible because of a series of factors that range from the location in the galaxy and the configuration of the Solar System to local characteristics of the planet, and that it is unlikely that all such requirements are simultaneously met by another planet.
The proponents of this hypothesis consider that very little evidence suggests the existence of extraterrestrial life, and that at this point it is just a desired result and not a reasonable scientific explanation for any gathered data. In 1961, astronomer and astrophysicist Frank Drake devised the Drake equation as a way to stimulate scientific dialogue at a meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
The Drake equation is a probabilistic argument used to estimate the number of active, communicative extraterrestrial civilisations in the Milky Way galaxy. Although most searches are focused on the biology of extraterrestrial life, an extraterrestrial intelligence capable to develop a civilization may be detectable by other means as well. Technology may generate technosignatures, effects on the native planet that may not be caused by natural causes.
There are three main types of technosignatures considered: interstellar communications, effects on the atmosphere, and planetary-sized structures such as Dyson spheres. Organizations such as the SETI Institute search the cosmos for potential forms of communication. They started with radio waves, and now search for laser pulses as well. The challenge for this search is that there are natural sources of such signals as well, such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae, and the difference between a natural signal and an artificial one would be in its specific patterns.
Astronomers intend to use artificial intelligence for this, as it can manage large amounts of data and is devoid of biases and preconceptions. Besides, even if there is an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, there is no guarantee that it is transmitting radio communications in the direction of Earth. The length of time required for a signal to travel across space means that a potential answer may arrive decades or centuries after the initial message.
The atmosphere of Earth is rich in nitrogen dioxide as a result of air pollution, which can be detectable. The natural abundance of carbon, which is also relatively reactive, makes it likely to be a basic component of the development of a potential extraterrestrial technological civilization, as it is on Earth. Fossil fuels may likely be generated and used on such worlds as well.
The abundance of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere can also be a clear technosignature, considering their role in ozone depletion. Light pollution may be another technosignature, as multiple lights on the night side of a rocky planet can be a sign of advanced technological development. However, modern telescopes are not strong enough to study exoplanets with the required level of detail to perceive it…
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